The cyber faithfuls

Here are short profiles of three people, popular on Twitter for their strong political stance. They often steer the conversation and debates on the microblogging platform – before the conversation devolves into abuse and name-calling, that is. Here they talk about why they do what they do, how they evolved their political leanings and how they think the Internet and the social media impacts political discourse.

Sanjay Jha

(Twitter followers at the time of writing: over 15,000. Supports the Congress)

Remember the #Feku and #Pappu hashtags that trended on the Indian Twitter-verse not so long ago? Well, #feku came from Sanjay Jha and a team of volunteers. Or so he claims. For those who get their news from television, Jha is no stranger. At prime time when the screens on TV news channels are transformed into chessboards, he is often seen occupying one of the many small boxes. He started out appearing as a cricket expert on these panels. But over time, he has made an increased number of TV appearances defending the Congress position. And that is something he extends on to his Twitter feed and blog as well.

A Mumbai-based “executive coach”, Jha has been writing for mainstream newspapers and magazines since 2004. Though he began blogging much earlier on issues and policies in favour of the Congress, it was only in 2009 that online presence took off in a big way for him. That was when he launched the Hamara Congress website with IIM Bangalore professor Rajeev Gowda. He admits to have been in touch with very senior Congress leaders in strategizing the party’s presence on social media. However, he refuses to come on record with names.

A look at Jha’s tweets (from the handle @JhaSanjay) show him in various Congress v/s BJP debates and arguments which have him saying things like, “You guys have lost the war; I can sense the frustration and loss. #TeamCongress is unstoppable. Quit it!”, and even, “You are so funny! Your #Feku is called a mass-murderer by many! And you talk of ” aukaat”?? Calm down, face the faucts!”

Officially, Jha admits, he has an “advisory role” on the AICC sub group on “Communications and Publicity”. But money is a dirty, dirty thing. “My company does not have any contract with the Congress. I don’t do this for commercial benefit,” claims Jha, who spends almost three hours a day online.

In such a case, a question about why he does what he does is only natural. Ask him and he laughs, “I am a Bihari. Politics and political debates is in our DNA.” On a serious note, he credits his mother with shaping his political worldview. “My mother was a strong Congress supporter. She would tell me stories about Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri when I was a child. I was fascinated. Some people in the Congress may not have held the same standards as these two leaders, but at a larger level, it remains a progressive party,” says Jha, who used to run a cricket website CricketNext.com.

As for the #Feku tag, Jha says it was made over the weekend after Rahul Gandhi’s speech at a CII meet. “Some senior leaders from the BJP made very childish remarks about his speech. We then came up with this over the weekend before Modi’s speech. His facts are often exaggerated. I had a chat with my team to come up with something along these lines. I said, let’s see if we can put him in his place,” Jha told TOI Crest over phone. Feku is a colloquial Hindi term that refers to a person who exaggerates a lot. “It’s a flippant and sarcastic term. It got very popular,” says Jha, who concedes that the BJP presence is much stronger in the online space. “They are very well organized. They were extremely over the top in the way they ridiculed Rahul Gandhi recently,” he says.

Jha hasn’t ruled out a full time political career for himself. “If I need to make a full time transition to active politics at a later point, I will,” he says.

Shivendra Singh Chauhan

(Twitter followers at the time of writing: over 3000. Supports the Aam Aadmi Party)

If you have been following the anti-corruption movement online, chances are, you’ve read Shivendra Singh Chauhan without realizing it. He is the man behind the movement’s online presence on Twitter and Facebook. For a campaign that relied so heavily on social media – with tangible results, too – Chauhan has a rather modest Twitter presence. He tweets fairly intermittently to his 3,000-odd followers from the handle @shivendravats.

A former journalist, Chauhan now works with Greenpeace in Bangalore. However, he still devotes a fair amount of time to managing the India Against Corruption and Janlokpal accounts on Facebook and Twitter. That is when he is not promoting the anti-corruption cause and Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) from his own personal handle. He is “Deputy Director, Mobilisation”.

Online political engagement for him began back in 2010, when he started a Facebook page themed on the Commonwealth Games scams. “It was a small initiative. There was no long-term vision,” says Chauhan. In October, that year, he came in touch with Arvind Kejriwal through a friend. “We were discussing the Lokpal campaign and that’s when the name ‘India Against Corruption’ came up,” says Chauhan, who dates his first “big action” online back to 30 January 2011. “We managed to mobilize a lot of people across the country with that. There is a constant focus on corruption and Lokpal in our pages, but we also write about tribal rights and land rights,” says Chauhan.

Chauhan counts himself among the urban middle class who he says is “disenchanted” with the current political scenario. “None of the mainstream political parties have delivered what they should have. The urban middle class wants a radical shift,” says Chauhan, who is reluctant to classify himself in a particular political category. “I’m neither with the Right, nor the Left. I’m not even centrist…I’m just looking for change,” says Chauhan, who provides his services to AAP entirely voluntarily.

There is one department where most other online political junkies online would envy Chauhan – he gets nearly no abusive trolls. “We hardly get trolls. It could be because the whole movement generated a lot of goodwill,” he says. However, Chauhan admits he once received a lot of negative comments by people of his own team, when he expressed a difference of opinion with Arvind Kejriwal. This was entirely at odds with the reverential manner in which most supporters speak of their leaders on such platforms. “We are very sarcastic in our tone. We ask a lot of questions. So when Arvind went on a fast, I questioned the legitimacy of that as well. The party was supposed to be founded on the premise that such things don’t work. But AAP supporters online did not take it too well,” he says.

Evaluating the results of such campaigning can be tricky. A recent study claimed that social media could influence 160 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats this general election. Chauhan feels the number is inflated. “One needs conscious work and mobilization to make people come out and vote. The effect of social media would be significant, and can go up in the future. But 160 is too high a number,” he says.

Besides his new-found day-job, Chauhan currently spends five to six hours a day campaigning for AAP online. What compels him to take this on? “It has become second nature. It’s a calling that I have found,” he says.

Vijay Chada

(Twitter followers at the time of writing: over 12,500. Supports the BJP)

When not mining data for analysis and collation, Bangalore-based Vijaya Chada, better known as @centerofright on Twitter, can be seen holding forth on right-wing policies on the microblogging website.

He stands out amongst various others on Twitter who are on his side of the political spectrum, for lack of name-calling and anger in his tweets. “I have seen much in life. I have been an avid news follower since the 70s. Also, I don’t have young hormones raging through me,” says the 39-year old freelance consultant.

Chada says he is not officially employed by the BJP, but that his family has been a supporter of the party for generations now. He counts that as the main influence shaping his political convictions – discussions in family gatherings with his grandfather and father. Chada actively participates in the activities of a group called “Friends of BJP”. “They organize talks and debates. Sometimes they call leaders from the party to come and speak on various issues of the day. It is a group for professionals who are not a part of the political mainstream,” says Chada, also a part of another similar group called “Jignasa”.

As a part of his day job, Chada says he ends up spending a lot of time online, going through documents, reports and other data on government websites – a source he invariably ends up getting his news from. He has several bones to pick with mainstream media, especially English television news channels. “There are very few right wing journalists in mainstream media, by design or chance I can’t say. Right wing has never been given a space. It is tarred as bad without a rational discourse on why it is considered so. Mainstream media often picks up the weakest argument made by right wingers, shove it under a microscope and paint the entire Right as wrong,” says the Modi supporter, explaining why he prefers getting his news from alternate media.

He also feels that the mainstream media missed the blogging revolution that preceded the social media boom, and now finds itself struggling with being questioned online. “Barkha Dutt once complained of being abused online. I made a list of all her Twitter mentions and sent it to her. If there is abuse, there are laws in place to deal with it. Otherwise, such trolls can be ignored or blocked. I do the same,” says Chada, who spends close to 4-5 hours a day online. In its role as an alternate information source, Chada feels social media really could swing the upcoming general elections. “Social Media’s influence in elections would not be felt in a direct but an indirect way. This will hold the mainstream media accountable and see that they do not get away with lies,” says Chada, who has been an active netizen for 11 years.

However social media may or may not influence elections, the recent hashtag wars are definitely not high on Chada’s agenda. “Hashtag wars are interesting and juvenile at the same time. I have not participated in it. When folks feel strongly about an issue they do join in. It is time not to pick sides, as it suits them. There were umpteen hashtags that were against the Congress, but they were hardly reported,” he says. There is one place where it sure will be reported. And Chada has long been there.

(Portions of these interviews were carried in a story in the TOI Crest edition, on April 27, 2013)

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Author

Kim Arora is reporter with Times of India’s news features team in New Delhi. She writes on a wide variety of subjects such as web,
technology, books, publishing and women’s issues, which also happen to be her personal interests. Her spare and not-so-spare time is largely spent devouring books of all possible kinds and trawling the Internet for memes, vlogs and cat videos. She tweets a fair bit and can be found posting her observations about life, universe and everything from the handle @arorakim.

Kim Arora is reporter with Times of India’s news features team in New Delhi. She writes on a wide variety of subjects such as web,
technology, books, pub. . .

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Author

Kim Arora is reporter with Times of India’s news features team in New Delhi. She writes on a wide variety of subjects such as web,
technology, books, publishing and women’s issues, which also happen to be her personal interests. Her spare and not-so-spare time is largely spent devouring books of all possible kinds and trawling the Internet for memes, vlogs and cat videos. She tweets a fair bit and can be found posting her observations about life, universe and everything from the handle @arorakim.

Kim Arora is reporter with Times of India’s news features team in New Delhi. She writes on a wide variety of subjects such as web,
technology, books, pub. . .